


Territories That Had Become Stone

by J (j_writes)



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He set out to tell a story, and in the process of editing, he decided to stop trying to tell anything at all.  He asked instead, and found that the questions came easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Territories That Had Become Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delwyn](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Delwyn).



He set out to tell a story, and in the process of editing, he decided to stop trying to tell anything at all. He asked instead, and found that the questions came easier.

It wasn't a book about Neil Perry – it was never supposed to be – but in the end, Todd found that his memories of that year had colored every word, every turn of phrase, until sitting in front of the pages with his pen in his hand felt like nothing more than an extension of that fall and winter, that endless time when they were young and thought they understood anything at all.

They hadn't, and he was unsure that the passage of time had made it any better.

When it was done, piled in front of him, bound up with string, he sat by the light of a flickering candle and thought for a long time about tipping it over, spilling its wax onto the pages, watching them curl and listen to them crackle as they burned. Instead, he packaged it up and addressed it to his editor, because that was what a writer did after he'd disappeared from the world for a year and produced nothing to show for it but a tattered and overworked manuscript.

Once it was gone, handed over to the postman, he drank. He drank, and he slept, and he remembered to eat for the first time in a long time, and he did nothing else, because writing this book had drained him in a way nothing else ever had – not his first few books, not any of the articles he'd ever written, not any test he'd ever had to take when he was in school. He'd put too much of himself into the pages, and suddenly realized that he had no idea how to be whole again.

"You should travel," his editor told him, once he was holding the finished copy in his hands, cover art he hadn't designed, title he was still unsure of. "There are people talking about the book already. You could get features written about you, do some readings. You need a publicist." She hired him one, and brought the grand total of people he talked to anymore up to two.

He traveled. Not because his publicist told him to, but because he couldn't look at his four walls for much longer without losing his mind. It was surprisingly more comfortable than he'd expected it to be, and he fell into a rhythm, doing a radio show here, a paper interview there, reading to tiny bookshops full of housewives and the occasional group of students. His voice wavered, sometimes, and he'd lose his words entirely, but he was a writer, a print reporter, not someone who was expected to talk for a living, so he was forgiven.

People thanked him for his book. The first time, it startled him so much his fingers slipped against the spine and his copy tumbled to the floor. After that, it got no easier, but it became familiar, and he worked out a kind of gracious nod, a mumbled reply about how glad he was that his words spoke to people.

"Why do you write?" he was asked sometimes, and his answer was always the same.

"To woo women," he'd say, with a self-deprecating smile.

"How's that working out for you?" asked a man in the back of the crowd in New York, and Todd laughed with the crowd, but when someone in front shifted and he caught the man's eye, his breath caught, and laughing was the last thing on his mind.

He closed the reading abruptly, spoke only briefly to the people who came up to his table, watching over their heads the whole time as the man in the suit perused the shelves of the bookstore, taking down a book here and there, leafing through the pages, his lips sometimes twisting into a tight little smile. Finally, when the crowd had dispersed, and Todd had gathered his things, he made his way to the back of the store, stood beside the man, and looked at the poetry shelves with him.

"Charlie Dalton," he said, like he was commenting on the weather, and Charlie's mouth did the thing that was almost a smile again.

"The name," he said, "is Nuwanda."

Todd took in Charlie's suit, the cufflinks on his wrists, the briefcase by his side. "No," he said. "It's not."

There was a sharp flash of hurt in Charlie's eyes, and he said, "I read your book," in a flat voice.

"I have a few," Todd told him, because it was easier than to acknowledge what Charlie wasn't saying.

"I read those, too," Charlie said, which surprised him. "I got your paper delivered, too, when you were still with them."

"I am still with them," Todd said, even though he wasn't sure it was true anymore. "I took some time off to write, that's all."

"To write this." Charlie held up a copy of Todd's book that was already dog-eared at the edges.

Todd considered his reply for a few moments, and eventually just said, "Yes. To write that."

They got coffee. Not because they needed it – Todd's hands were already unsure and jittery as he buttoned his coat, stepping out into the snow – but because there were a thousand things they weren't saying, and it was easier to avoid them with mugs in their hands that they could stare into when the conversation lapsed. They could have just walked away from each other, right there in the store, but there was something comfortable about being around Charlie that he hadn't felt in years – decades, even – and he wasn't ready to leave, not just yet. So they sat, Charlie's briefcase propped against one of his chair legs, and he talked about his banking practice, about the case Knox was working on that ended up in the paper last week, about the Christmas card that he just got from Pitts. The list of things they didn't talk about was longer, more important, than any of the words they did say, but by the time they finished talking, their mugs were empty and cold, and the waitress was cleaning the table beside them, the shop deserted and closing for the evening.

"How long are you in town?" Charlie asked as they stood and gathered their things.

_Until tomorrow,_, Todd almost said, and then hesitated, tugging at the end of his scarf. "I'm not sure," he replied instead. New York was the last stop on his trip, and he had a train ticket home in the morning. He knew in that moment that he wouldn't be using it.

"Here," Charlie said, and passed Todd a business card across the table. It hurt, somehow, looking at the professionally lettered words, remembering the way that Charlie's quick and almost illegible scrawl used to fill pages in seconds. He wondered, taking the card from the table, if that writing marked the margins of his book. "Don't leave without calling me," Charlie said, and looked at Todd expectantly until he nodded. "I mean it," he reiterated, and something in the forcefulness of his words, the way he reached out to grip Todd's arm through his coat, reminded Todd of Charlie from the old days, Charlie with his opinions and his wild ideas, and so he nodded again.

"I'll call," he said.

Charlie relaxed a little. "Good," he said, then used his grip on Todd's arm to drag him in, not quite a hug, but just holding onto him for a second, and Todd was reminded sharply of that early morning in the snow, Charlie and Knox and the weight of all of the words they couldn't form. He held onto Charlie for the briefest of moments, then pulled back.

They walked out into the cold together, and Charlie reached to flick Todd's scarf up over his shoulder. It startled a laugh out of him, and Charlie smiled, sudden and brilliant. "There it is," he said. "I was wondering if you still had it." He reached out and patted Todd's face with a gloved hand, his expression halfway between mocking and nostalgic. "Remember," he said, "Gotta do more. Gotta _be_ more." He turned and walked off down the street whistling, and Todd stood and watched him go through the falling snowflakes, listening to the haunting echo of saxophone music from long ago.


End file.
